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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27200240">Strike a Match</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilookedback/pseuds/ilookedback'>ilookedback</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Hyggetober Challenge Ficlets [21]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Mentalist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Speed Dating, soft n sappy per usual</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:30:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,439</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27200240</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilookedback/pseuds/ilookedback</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Guy number three is—well. He’s handsome, for one thing. He has broad shoulders under his black leather jacket, and his clean-shaven face is the perfect combination of chiseled and soft, featuring an elegant nose and kind eyes. He seems a little distracted, as though he’s just going through the motions and doesn’t expect to find true love in this coffee shop, either. He’s almost a little cagey, asking basic questions and offering short, vague answers to yours.</p><p>“What do you do?” you ask him.</p><p>“I work for the government,” he says, like that’s an answer. You imagine away his leather jacket and picture a boring suit in its place. You think he’d look nice in navy blue.</p><p>“This is DC,” you remind him. “Everybody works for the government.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Marcus Pike/You</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Hyggetober Challenge Ficlets [21]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952407</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Strike a Match</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For day 21 of my Hyggetober Ficlet Challenge, which is based off of <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B201-j7ljdU/?igshid=1pflwcl5260me">this prompt list</a> and will span several Pedro fandoms. Today's prompt is "matcha."</p><p>contains brief bad-mouthing of Republicans, from the reader's perspective. sorry if that offends you, lol.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The whole concept of speed dating is already vaguely mortifying, and you can’t help but think the coffee shop hosting the event is not doing it any favors by calling it <em>Meet Your Matcha!!</em> (exclamation points theirs).</p><p>“It doesn’t even rhyme,” you point out in a whisper. “It’s mah-tcha, not match-uh.”</p><p>Your friend, who’s also the person who dragged you here, looks unimpressed by your observation. “It’s just supposed to be cute,” she says. “Besides, it’s for charity.”</p><p>The promotional flyers had indeed proclaimed that 50% of the proceeds from the sign-up fees would go to a local kids’ art charity you’ve never heard of. It had been the tipping point in her argument convincing you to come to this.</p><p>“And for <em>love</em>,” she adds teasingly. As if you’re going to find the man of your dreams in five minutes over a decaf vanilla latte.</p><p>You do your best to suppress an eye roll and follow her inside to look for Prince Charming.</p><p> </p><p>The first guy is an investment banker and uses most of the brief time allotted to talk about money. He advises you to consolidate your retirement accounts and takes a long moment to stop and think before answering when you politely ask what his interests are outside of work. You leave him behind with a vague intention to Google “index funds” later (they’re a good choice, he’d said with only a little bit of condescension, for someone in your position) and the firm conviction that you will never, ever, have little rich babies with him.</p><p>The second guy doesn’t let you get a word in edgewise. He’ll ask you a question and then answer it himself before you’ve even taken a breath, like the whole thing was rhetorical in the first place. You feel a little dazed by the time you move on to the next table.</p><p>Guy number three is—well. He’s handsome, for one thing. He has broad shoulders under his black leather jacket, and his clean-shaven face is the perfect combination of chiseled and soft, featuring an elegant nose and kind eyes. He seems a little distracted, as though he’s just going through the motions and doesn’t expect to find true love in this coffee shop, either. He’s almost a little cagey, asking basic questions and offering short, vague answers to yours.</p><p>“What do you do?” you ask him.</p><p>“I work for the government,” he says, like that’s an answer. You imagine away his leather jacket and picture a boring suit in its place. You think he’d look nice in navy blue.</p><p>“This is DC,” you remind him. “Everybody works for the government.”</p><p>It’s supposed to be a hint that you’d like a more specific answer—if he’s a Republican congressional aide, you’re cutting this meeting short and getting a refill on your drink—but he just smiles and turns the question around. “How about you?”</p><p>You aim for something breezy and vague, to match his vibe. “I work at a museum,” you tell him.</p><p>For the first time since you sat down, he looks genuinely interested, and as his face lights up you feel your heart start to pound and you think, <em>oh no</em>. This man has some actual passion inside and you’re not quite prepared for the intensity of his focus now that he’s come to life.</p><p>“Really?” he says. “Art?”</p><p>You nod and he looks pleased and you think, <em>oh no, oh NO</em>. The thrill that shoots through you at making his warm eyes go happy is almost too much to bear and feels like it could become addictive, if given the chance.</p><p>“Who’s your fav—” he starts, but he’s cut off by the sound of the chime signaling you to move to the next table. You stare silently at each other for a moment and then he smiles, a little sheepishly, and holds out his hand to shake.</p><p>“Well. It was nice to meet you.” His thumb brushes over the back of your hand and you miss the sensation as soon as it’s gone.</p><p>It’s not like your brief encounter has ruined all other men for you, but it may have ruined this batch. Everyone else down the line seems bland by comparison, lacking that spark you’d seen in his eyes. When the hour is up you rejoin your friend and the two of you mark up your sheets together to let the organizers know which men you’d liked enough to see if you’re mutually interested. She forces you to pick two guys besides your art enthusiast bureaucrat (“You liked him?” she asks, pulling a face. “He was cute, I guess, but he seemed like he wanted to be somewhere else the whole time.”) and you begrudgingly check off Guy #6 and Guy #8, who’d both seemed nice enough, albeit probably unable to distinguish between Manet and Monet.</p><p>You look across the room for your Prince Charming, thinking for a brief, silly moment that perhaps you’ll lock eyes and experience the room fading around you until all that’s left are the two of you, and he’ll ask you to dinner, and you’ll have a magical evening, and eight months from now he’ll bring you back to this spot to propose—it’s not the greatest location, but it’s the place where you <em>met</em> and that makes it romantic—and two years from now you’ll be married and living in the suburbs and having his middle-income children.</p><p>He’s not looking your way. He’s engaged in a tense looking conversation with one of the shop employees, all furrowed brow and hushed tones, and you try to convince yourself he’s probably not that great after all, as you turn to go.</p><p> </p><p>You get an email the next day, from the <em>Meet Your Matcha!!</em> organizers, letting you know that Guys #6 and 8 had marked you down, too, and giving you their contact information if you want to set up a date. There’s no mention of Guy #3.</p><p>You tell yourself he probably is a Republican, after all, and this is for the best.</p><p> </p><p>It’s another week before your office phone rings and you recognize his smooth voice almost immediately when he introduces himself. It seems improbable. Impossible.</p><p>“How did you get this number?” you ask.</p><p>“Well,” he says. “I told you I work for the government? I’m actually an FBI agent. I was at that cafe kind of undercover. That’s why I was so… vague.”</p><p><em>Cagey</em>, you think. And then, <em>what?</em></p><p>“Undercover speed dating?” you ask, incredulous. His soft chuckle comes over the line.</p><p>“That charity it was supposed to benefit is fake. It’s—well, <em>allegedly</em>—part of a money laundering scheme that’s tied up in a much larger syndicate. We arrested the cafe manager. She was in on the whole thing. Allegedly,” he adds, and you wonder if he’s supposed to be telling you any of this.</p><p>“Okay,” you say. There’s a brief silence as you try to think of a polite way to ask why exactly he’s calling.</p><p>“The thing is,” he says, “I was looking through the, ah, evidence, and somebody had made copies of the scoring sheets from that night.” He huffs a laugh. “I’m not sure if they thought it was actually relevant or if they just wanted to be able to bust my—I mean, to make fun of me, for how few people marked me down.”</p><p>You laugh, but then he says, “You marked me down,” and your laughter catches as you feel your face heat.</p><p>“You didn’t put me,” you acknowledge. “It’s okay.”</p><p>“I didn’t fill one out,” he says. “I wasn’t really there as myself, looking for someone. But—”</p><p>You hold your breath.</p><p>“We would have matched, if I had,” he tells you. “So I thought I’d—abuse my power a little by tracking down your phone number and seeing if you’d like to get dinner sometime.”</p><p>“Oh,” you breathe.</p><p>“I know we didn’t really have long to connect but I felt like there was something there, at the end, for a second. I kept wondering later, what your answer would have been, about your favorite artist.”</p><p>“Okay,” you agree, feeling a little giddy. “At dinner, I’ll tell you mine and you tell me yours.”</p><p>“Guess we’ll see if they match-a,” he jokes, and he’s immediately apologizing for it when you groan down the line at the horrendous pun.</p><p>“Sorry, sorry, sorry. I promise better jokes this Friday if you’re free,” he laughs. You picture his eyes again, the warmth and shine of them, and you wish you could see his face now all broken into laughter.</p><p>“Alright,” you tell him. “It’s a date.”</p>
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